Chicago composting company turns scraps into soil

As afternoon rolls around, WasteNot Compost is making the rounds across Chicago one five-gallon green bucket at a time.

WasteNot is part of a growing movement nationally, but all of this grew from very humble beginnings.

At just 26-years-old, Liam Donnelly, owner of WasteNot, is an industry veteran. The company began as a passion project in his parent’s backyard in 2012.

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“I grew up in a household that was composting,” Donnelly said. “It’s one of the most effective ways to reduce methane, emissions and greenhouse.”

He says his mom and dad had always instilled the importance of recycling.

“I had a home team advantage and took over the parent’s backyard and garage, probably should have paid them some rent back then,” Donnelly said. “We were able to reinvest our profits into growing the business and I’m really proud of the operation that we have here in Chicago.”

Something took root when Donnelly was working at a local café. At the time, he realized he was throwing out hundreds of pounds a week in just coffee grounds.

The cafe offered to pay for his services and in a short time, he would bike and wagon the grounds from the restaurant to the backyard of his Lincoln Square home.

Soon, the word spread, and neighbors began requesting his services too. Things really picked up when he brought a friend on board to help with the business.

The first truck was purchased and WasteNot has continued its meteoric rise now with a fleet of electric vehicles, and residential and commercial clients such as Lettuce Entertain You Restaurants.

“It just made sense that food scraps could turn into soil and turn into this compost. That was pretty cool,” Donnelly said. “I remember falling in love with the process, not because of the science. I didn’t learn the science until much later in my life.”

WasteNot offers its clients the composted material back, one of the practices that earned it the title of best overall compost company by treehuggers.com. It was also one of the first zero emissions compost services in the city and possibly the country.

“Both an individual and business is a separate endeavor to cut food waste so it is largely of interest to those that are looking to make sustainable impacts personally and professionally,” he said.

According to Biocycle, which keeps tabs on the composting business, the sector has 11 million customers nationally and is expected to grow from $8.15 billion in 2024 to $8.86 billion in 2025 with an 8% growth rate annually for the next five years.

Donnelly and his team are working on expansion plans of their own.

“I’m really excited about the possibility of expanding outside of Chicago, in other metro areas and potentially out of the state of Illinois,” he said.